I know that HS2 is the shittiest of shit sandwiches. It should be a study in how to fuck up infrastructure projects so that we do it differently next time. Because there has to be a next time. We have stopped investing in new infrastructure. We're not building new railways, we're barely electrifying and modernising the old ones. We're not building airports or motorways. And everyone else is.
A few obvious gimmes to avoid next time: 1) A deliverable objective. 225mph made no sense yet is responsible for large amounts of the cost 2) Decouple from daily politics. We're building this infrastructure, here is the market price for the land, no we won't be swayed by legal idiocy or political bunfights. How much of the cost overruns have been caused by internal political rows inside the various Tory governments? 3) Don't be zealots. HS2 has an absurd contract for infrastructure which leaves the contractor liable for all kinds of lunacy decades into the future. Which means design choices costing vast amounts now to mitigate down the line private sector risk. This is a government project - we bear the risk regardless of how evil certain politicians thought state subsidy was
If Starmer wants to actually get things done, get Road Construction Units formed and actually get on with these stalled for decades projects. Cut the costs by having RCUs permanently busy. Never mind "we're stopping wiring the Midland Mainline because it costs money now". Wires means cheaper trains, lower running costs and higher economic activity. Just get on with the frakking thing already.
This is why a change of government is needed. No, not back to the Jake Berry's of this world who utterly arsed things up. We are broken and we are lost. Unable to do the things that France and Spain and Belgium and Germany do, falling further and further behind whilst still claiming to be better than them.
Ask Macron for ideas how to get things built.
It’s been discussed on here before and links provided showing that there is a bit of a myth about us being singularly bad at infrastructure projects compared to Germany etc.
We also have the disadvantage compared to France, Germany and Spain for example of having a smaller country with a large population and high land costs which doesn’t help at all.
Though on the flipside being relatively small and dense should help with the business case on the demand side. But we don't actually do business cases very well: there are so many benefits go unassessed.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
Since our very constitution revolves around nepo babyism hardly surprising if the lower orders take it up. We can only thank our lucky stars that the king in waiting believes he has the talents to end homelessness, the global environmental crisis and war in the middle east. A renaissance prince indeed.
To be fair to Prince William his brother went to the Middle East to kill Muslims, a long and noble tradition for European princes.
I know that HS2 is the shittiest of shit sandwiches. It should be a study in how to fuck up infrastructure projects so that we do it differently next time. Because there has to be a next time. We have stopped investing in new infrastructure. We're not building new railways, we're barely electrifying and modernising the old ones. We're not building airports or motorways. And everyone else is.
A few obvious gimmes to avoid next time: 1) A deliverable objective. 225mph made no sense yet is responsible for large amounts of the cost 2) Decouple from daily politics. We're building this infrastructure, here is the market price for the land, no we won't be swayed by legal idiocy or political bunfights. How much of the cost overruns have been caused by internal political rows inside the various Tory governments? 3) Don't be zealots. HS2 has an absurd contract for infrastructure which leaves the contractor liable for all kinds of lunacy decades into the future. Which means design choices costing vast amounts now to mitigate down the line private sector risk. This is a government project - we bear the risk regardless of how evil certain politicians thought state subsidy was
If Starmer wants to actually get things done, get Road Construction Units formed and actually get on with these stalled for decades projects. Cut the costs by having RCUs permanently busy. Never mind "we're stopping wiring the Midland Mainline because it costs money now". Wires means cheaper trains, lower running costs and higher economic activity. Just get on with the frakking thing already.
This is why a change of government is needed. No, not back to the Jake Berry's of this world who utterly arsed things up. We are broken and we are lost. Unable to do the things that France and Spain and Belgium and Germany do, falling further and further behind whilst still claiming to be better than them.
Ask Macron for ideas how to get things built.
Agree with most of that (not the apostrophe after 'Berry' though!).
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
Since our very constitution revolves around nepo babyism hardly surprising if the lower orders take it up. We can only thank our lucky stars that the king in waiting believes he has the talents to end homelessness, the global environmental crisis and war in the middle east. A renaissance prince indeed.
To be fair to Prince William his brother went to the Middle East to kill Muslims, a long and noble tradition for European princes.
Yes, but that nobleman is exiled to living in the colonies now, while we have William who didn't do that as heir.
Likewise americanophile. Despite all its social problems the US was great in several important ways and now it is a lot less great, thanks to the malign would-be dictator in the White House. I regret that massively.
Indeed but by the end of 2029 not impossible we could have US President Buttigieg and French President Bardella and UK PM Farage in which case the polling might look rather different, with Labour and LD voters loving the US again and Reform voters loving France
Nonsense. The POTUS will be President Eyeliner or President Trump spawn.
Tories propose a one in one out asylum deal with France. Fail to get anything Labour agree a one in one out asylum deal with France. Tories - a one in one out deal will not deter anybody
Quite right too. Easy for them to have one out to Reform. Less likely that in return they will get one in
It's not a one-in-one-out deal though, is it? It's a 17-in-one-out-and-then-one-back-in deal.
In all honesty, if I were France, I would be cheerfully waving them on too. As Eabhal says, we need to look at demand.
We could switch the national language to welsh?
I was going to make the same suggestion. English speaking seems to be one of the big pull factors.
The really scary thing to contemplate is, what if those Trump measures that make our skin crawl actually work? If the economy improves? If throwing his weight and his bombs around achieves peace? If the murder rate declines? If people start migrating to the US because they have skills but stop swimming across the Rio Grande because the American Dream is by invitation only?
Does Trumpism then replace democracy as the global norm?
The US economy is not going well. Trump has failed to achieve peace in Ukraine (in 24 hours or longer). The murder rate was already relatively low when he took office. I don't think you need to worry about your what if yet.
Trump has been in power for 6 months - the economy might crater or might boom and so MarqueeMark’s point stands on the “what if?” Question. If you are saying that Trump is clearly a failure as he hasn’t got a booming economy in 6 months then you will be infinitely more excoriating about Labour’s failure to do so in a year, yes?
As for peace for Ukraine, we all knew the 24 hours was bombast however, again, Trump hasn’t achieved peace in 6 months, Biden, The EU and UK haven’t managed it in years so again he might also fail but he could also succeed, early days.
I’m far from a Trump or MAGA lover but it’s very easy to point at “failures” so far but it’s early and the original point that if it succeeds it asks very difficult questions is a very valid one.
"Britain is a crime-ridden hell hole" - yes mate, because you defunded the police and the criminal justice system. "taxes are sky high" - because you broke the economy with cuts and put the taxes up "a benefits system bringing the world's poor to our shores with no control" - asylum seekers don't get benefits mate, but even if that was true whose policies in government created the vast increase in arrivals? "He [Farage] doesn't change his views when the political weather changes" - unlike Berry apparently
This is the problem that Reform have. If the very best/worst Tories join Reform and say "this country is broken, vote for us" when do the voters say "but you are the fuckers who broke it"?
Which is missing a number of things - in France, for example, the informal economy is more about the restrictive labour practices. These make running small business very difficult. So large numbers of French citizens are employed “on the left” (as USSRians used to say).
It is very hard to get a job in France without suitable papers. A blind eye is turned towards employing French citizens irregularly. Employing illegals like that gets hit with a heavy hand - the unions (among others) are very keen to get such employers reported and shutdown.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
Since our very constitution revolves around nepo babyism hardly surprising if the lower orders take it up. We can only thank our lucky stars that the king in waiting believes he has the talents to end homelessness, the global environmental crisis and war in the middle east. A renaissance prince indeed.
To be fair to Prince William his brother went to the Middle East to kill Muslims, a long and noble tradition for European princes.
Don't think Afghanistan is traditionally thought of as ME, though Harry only got a D in his A level Geography so maybe navigation wasn't his strong point.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
Since our very constitution revolves around nepo babyism hardly surprising if the lower orders take it up. We can only thank our lucky stars that the king in waiting believes he has the talents to end homelessness, the global environmental crisis and war in the middle east. A renaissance prince indeed.
To be fair to Prince William his brother went to the Middle East to kill Muslims, a long and noble tradition for European princes.
Don't think Afghanistan is traditionally thought of as ME, though Harry only got a D in his A level Geography so maybe navigation wasn't his strong point.
Shall we agree that he went to Muslim lands to kill Muslims?
I know that HS2 is the shittiest of shit sandwiches. It should be a study in how to fuck up infrastructure projects so that we do it differently next time. Because there has to be a next time. We have stopped investing in new infrastructure. We're not building new railways, we're barely electrifying and modernising the old ones. We're not building airports or motorways. And everyone else is.
A few obvious gimmes to avoid next time: 1) A deliverable objective. 225mph made no sense yet is responsible for large amounts of the cost 2) Decouple from daily politics. We're building this infrastructure, here is the market price for the land, no we won't be swayed by legal idiocy or political bunfights. How much of the cost overruns have been caused by internal political rows inside the various Tory governments? 3) Don't be zealots. HS2 has an absurd contract for infrastructure which leaves the contractor liable for all kinds of lunacy decades into the future. Which means design choices costing vast amounts now to mitigate down the line private sector risk. This is a government project - we bear the risk regardless of how evil certain politicians thought state subsidy was
If Starmer wants to actually get things done, get Road Construction Units formed and actually get on with these stalled for decades projects. Cut the costs by having RCUs permanently busy. Never mind "we're stopping wiring the Midland Mainline because it costs money now". Wires means cheaper trains, lower running costs and higher economic activity. Just get on with the frakking thing already.
This is why a change of government is needed. No, not back to the Jake Berry's of this world who utterly arsed things up. We are broken and we are lost. Unable to do the things that France and Spain and Belgium and Germany do, falling further and further behind whilst still claiming to be better than them.
Ask Macron for ideas how to get things built.
It’s been discussed on here before and links provided showing that there is a bit of a myth about us being singularly bad at infrastructure projects compared to Germany etc.
We also have the disadvantage compared to France, Germany and Spain for example of having a smaller country with a large population and high land costs which doesn’t help at all.
The thing that annoys me most about infrastructure is that you know that the price when first mooted will always be inflated hugely by the end. There are reasons for this, such as making (expensive) changes during construction and gold plating stuff, but its so inevitable.
Tories propose a one in one out asylum deal with France. Fail to get anything Labour agree a one in one out asylum deal with France. Tories - a one in one out deal will not deter anybody
Quite right too. Easy for them to have one out to Reform. Less likely that in return they will get one in
It's not a one-in-one-out deal though, is it? It's a 17-in-one-out-and-then-one-back-in deal.
In all honesty, if I were France, I would be cheerfully waving them on too. As Eabhal says, we need to look at demand.
We could switch the national language to welsh?
I was going to make the same suggestion. English speaking seems to be one of the big pull factors.
And if that doesn't work we could make the really tough choice that will scare everyone away. Appoint Liz Truss as PM for life.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
It’s anti aspiration, it leads to a de facto caste system.
The really scary thing to contemplate is, what if those Trump measures that make our skin crawl actually work? If the economy improves? If throwing his weight and his bombs around achieves peace? If the murder rate declines? If people start migrating to the US because they have skills but stop swimming across the Rio Grande because the American Dream is by invitation only?
Does Trumpism then replace democracy as the global norm?
The US economy is not going well. Trump has failed to achieve peace in Ukraine (in 24 hours or longer). The murder rate was already relatively low when he took office. I don't think you need to worry about your what if yet.
Trump has been in power for 6 months - the economy might crater or might boom and so MarqueeMark’s point stands on the “what if?” Question. If you are saying that Trump is clearly a failure as he hasn’t got a booming economy in 6 months then you will be infinitely more excoriating about Labour’s failure to do so in a year, yes?
As for peace for Ukraine, we all knew the 24 hours was bombast however, again, Trump hasn’t achieved peace in 6 months, Biden, The EU and UK haven’t managed it in years so again he might also fail but he could also succeed, early days.
I’m far from a Trump or MAGA lover but it’s very easy to point at “failures” so far but it’s early and the original point that if it succeeds it asks very difficult questions is a very valid one.
You have to set up some very clear metrics ahead of time to judge things like this, otherwise you end up with a bunfight over contradictory sets of confirmation biases.
And part of the problem there is that there aren't clear metrics for a lot of the things that matter (people's happiness, say), or whether Trump's policies were responsible for the changes (suppose Ukraine wins the war despite Trump cosying up to Putin).
The really scary thing to contemplate is, what if those Trump measures that make our skin crawl actually work? If the economy improves? If throwing his weight and his bombs around achieves peace? If the murder rate declines? If people start migrating to the US because they have skills but stop swimming across the Rio Grande because the American Dream is by invitation only?
Does Trumpism then replace democracy as the global norm?
The US economy is not going well. Trump has failed to achieve peace in Ukraine (in 24 hours or longer). The murder rate was already relatively low when he took office. I don't think you need to worry about your what if yet.
Trump has been in power for 6 months - the economy might crater or might boom and so MarqueeMark’s point stands on the “what if?” Question. If you are saying that Trump is clearly a failure as he hasn’t got a booming economy in 6 months then you will be infinitely more excoriating about Labour’s failure to do so in a year, yes?
As for peace for Ukraine, we all knew the 24 hours was bombast however, again, Trump hasn’t achieved peace in 6 months, Biden, The EU and UK haven’t managed it in years so again he might also fail but he could also succeed, early days.
I’m far from a Trump or MAGA lover but it’s very easy to point at “failures” so far but it’s early and the original point that if it succeeds it asks very difficult questions is a very valid one.
Trump inherited a great economy, Labour inherited a train wreck. There's a big difference.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
Letters and cards are physical objects, and so can feel more meaningful than an email.
Also, in some respects, the time it takes for them to travel is an advantage. Knowing that it took at least a couple of days to arrive, and would take at least a couple more for letter in the opposite direction, reduces the implicit pressure to reply immediately that exists with an email.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
It’s anti aspiration, it leads to a de facto caste system.
Will you be encouraging or discouraging your children to go into law?
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
It’s anti aspiration, it leads to a de facto caste system.
In one bank, they caught someone hiring only people of the right caste (literally).
"Britain is a crime-ridden hell hole" - yes mate, because you defunded the police and the criminal justice system. "taxes are sky high" - because you broke the economy with cuts and put the taxes up "a benefits system bringing the world's poor to our shores with no control" - asylum seekers don't get benefits mate, but even if that was true whose policies in government created the vast increase in arrivals? "He [Farage] doesn't change his views when the political weather changes" - unlike Berry apparently
This is the problem that Reform have. If the very best/worst Tories join Reform and say "this country is broken, vote for us" when do the voters say "but you are the fuckers who broke it"?
We also have Kemi Badenoch out swinging this morning on welfare - strange how I don't remember the last Conservative Government tightening up rules on welfare to deny payments to foreigners or "handing out taxpayer-funded cars for conditions like constipation.”
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
It’s anti aspiration, it leads to a de facto caste system.
Will you be encouraging or discouraging your children to go into law?
I will support whatever they choose, I’ve told them if they work hard they can achieve anything, look at me, the grandson of humble immigrants and how much I’ve achieved with hard work.
FWIW my eldest is thinking about becoming a doctor like his grandfather, my youngest is thinking about something physics/maths/F1 related, like me he loves physics, numbers, and F1.
I’ve told them if they are lazy, only the University of Oxford will accept them and they’ll spend the rest of their lives flipping burgers at McDonalds.
WRT the one in one out deal with France, which I suspect won't work, I suggest the plan which might work is this: For one week (or even less) starting on date X - the date being the day after it is announced, 100% of all boat arrivals will be returned immediately to France.
The probability is that people will then stop arriving, and wait for the week to be out. If that happens, then the short period, 24 hours before it ends, is extended a further few days, and so on without limit, just a few days at a time.
If they do keep arriving, then again, extending a few days at a time would fairly soon see a big drop in the numbers.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
It’s anti aspiration, it leads to a de facto caste system.
In one bank, they caught someone hiring only people of the right caste (literally).
Wouldn’t surprise me, I used to work somewhere where one or two departments only hired the privately educated.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
Letters and cards are physical objects, and so can feel more meaningful than an email.
Also, in some respects, the time it takes for them to travel is an advantage. Knowing that it took at least a couple of days to arrive, and would take at least a couple more for letter in the opposite direction, reduces the implicit pressure to reply immediately that exists with an email.
I don't feel a pressure to reply immediately with an email, anywhere I've ever worked/managed I've always had a policy that email is for non-urgent communication, unless clearly flagged as urgent.
The fact that email goes into an inbox with a plethora of other emails means it is there to be viewed as and when convenient, not immediately.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
It’s anti aspiration, it leads to a de facto caste system.
Will you be encouraging or discouraging your children to go into law?
I will support whatever they choose, I’ve told them if they work hard they can achieve anything, look at me, the grandson of humble immigrants and how much I’ve achieved with hard work.
FWIW my eldest is thinking about becoming a doctor like his grandfather, my youngest is thinking about something physics/maths/F1 related, like me he loves physics, numbers, and F1.
I’ve told them if they are lazy, only the University of Oxford will accept them and they’ll spend the rest of their lives flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Absolutely right, and I would do the same but criticising people for following their parents’ careers is a bit blinkered as, in that case, we have no idea if Sir David Frost told his boy “you must become a journalist or else” or he put him in a position to choose their own way with the best possible preparation and he chose journalism as he had seen it from the inside and liked what he saw.
It’s very easy to cry “nepotism” but usually it’s a lot less sinister than nepotism implies.
The really scary thing to contemplate is, what if those Trump measures that make our skin crawl actually work? If the economy improves? If throwing his weight and his bombs around achieves peace? If the murder rate declines? If people start migrating to the US because they have skills but stop swimming across the Rio Grande because the American Dream is by invitation only?
Does Trumpism then replace democracy as the global norm?
The US economy is not going well. Trump has failed to achieve peace in Ukraine (in 24 hours or longer). The murder rate was already relatively low when he took office. I don't think you need to worry about your what if yet.
Trump has been in power for 6 months - the economy might crater or might boom and so MarqueeMark’s point stands on the “what if?” Question. If you are saying that Trump is clearly a failure as he hasn’t got a booming economy in 6 months then you will be infinitely more excoriating about Labour’s failure to do so in a year, yes?
As for peace for Ukraine, we all knew the 24 hours was bombast however, again, Trump hasn’t achieved peace in 6 months, Biden, The EU and UK haven’t managed it in years so again he might also fail but he could also succeed, early days.
I’m far from a Trump or MAGA lover but it’s very easy to point at “failures” so far but it’s early and the original point that if it succeeds it asks very difficult questions is a very valid one.
Trump inherited a great economy, Labour inherited a train wreck. There's a big difference.
Neither is really true, or at least the reality is much more nuanced - Trump inherited a growing but dangerously unbalanced economy perilously dependent on a staggering amount of debt incurred gratuitously at a time of rising interest rates. And the UK economy after the twin blows of the pandemic and Ukraine was showing signs of life in the middle of last year, which Reeves had done her best to snuff out.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
Romans being forced to follow their fathers' professions dated from Diocletian, which some cite as the initial seed of feudalism.
It didn't work, though. Rome's main problem was endemic civil war. Augustus and Tiberius were to blame, but even after 15 centuries the succession process had never been formalised.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
One element of the use of the postal service, which collectively is very large, is the distribution of magazines and journals. These are to a large extent time critical, they are not parcels being effectively large letters, and increasingly small population/rural/non urban areas don't have old style newsagents.
Eg, the Economist prints over 400K weekly; a good proportion of these (don't know how many) will be mailed. Multiply this by a big number, and millions of weeklies awe going in the post.
Lots of people (younger as well as older??) won't and don't read long or demanding stuff or fun stuff on a screen. I am one of them.
The really scary thing to contemplate is, what if those Trump measures that make our skin crawl actually work? If the economy improves? If throwing his weight and his bombs around achieves peace? If the murder rate declines? If people start migrating to the US because they have skills but stop swimming across the Rio Grande because the American Dream is by invitation only?
Does Trumpism then replace democracy as the global norm?
The US economy is not going well. Trump has failed to achieve peace in Ukraine (in 24 hours or longer). The murder rate was already relatively low when he took office. I don't think you need to worry about your what if yet.
Trump has been in power for 6 months - the economy might crater or might boom and so MarqueeMark’s point stands on the “what if?” Question. If you are saying that Trump is clearly a failure as he hasn’t got a booming economy in 6 months then you will be infinitely more excoriating about Labour’s failure to do so in a year, yes?
As for peace for Ukraine, we all knew the 24 hours was bombast however, again, Trump hasn’t achieved peace in 6 months, Biden, The EU and UK haven’t managed it in years so again he might also fail but he could also succeed, early days.
I’m far from a Trump or MAGA lover but it’s very easy to point at “failures” so far but it’s early and the original point that if it succeeds it asks very difficult questions is a very valid one.
Trump inherited a great economy, Labour inherited a train wreck. There's a big difference.
Neither is really true, or at least the reality is much more nuanced - Trump inherited a growing but dangerously unbalanced economy perilously dependent on a staggering amount of debt incurred gratuitously at a time of rising interest rates. And the UK economy after the twin blows of the pandemic and Ukraine was showing signs of life in the middle of last year, which Reeves had done her best to snuff out.
Trump inherited a growing economy based on too much debt and a fiscally incontinent US budget . . . and has responded by blowing the budget deficit even wider and adding trillions more to the debt burden by his choices.
The worst possible choices.
Agreed completely on Reeves. Raising National Insurance was the worst possible choice a Chancellor could make and she hammered employers with multiple rises at the same time.
On topic - I'm a closet Francophile (don't know why - maybe I like to play as them in Hearts of Iron) so I certainly think the Entente Cordiale should be resurrected.
On that note I thank everyone for my time here, and I fully deserve the ban hammer that TSE is about to rain down on me.......
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
"Britain is a crime-ridden hell hole" - yes mate, because you defunded the police and the criminal justice system. "taxes are sky high" - because you broke the economy with cuts and put the taxes up "a benefits system bringing the world's poor to our shores with no control" - asylum seekers don't get benefits mate, but even if that was true whose policies in government created the vast increase in arrivals? "He [Farage] doesn't change his views when the political weather changes" - unlike Berry apparently
This is the problem that Reform have. If the very best/worst Tories join Reform and say "this country is broken, vote for us" when do the voters say "but you are the fuckers who broke it"?
We also have Kemi Badenoch out swinging this morning on welfare - strange how I don't remember the last Conservative Government tightening up rules on welfare to deny payments to foreigners or "handing out taxpayer-funded cars for conditions like constipation.”
I have more respect for Jake Berry. Ewwww, that was nasty to type.
The start of any recovery process is to accept that you are in a mess and need help. Kemi and the remaining Tories can't stomach the idea that they did anything wrong, and the endless "Labour have broken this" guff is met with deaf ears for obvious reasons.
I was going to ask if there has ever been a leader as tone deaf, arrogant and politically stunted as Kemi Badenoch. Then I remembered Liz Truss.
I know that HS2 is the shittiest of shit sandwiches. It should be a study in how to fuck up infrastructure projects so that we do it differently next time. Because there has to be a next time. We have stopped investing in new infrastructure. We're not building new railways, we're barely electrifying and modernising the old ones. We're not building airports or motorways. And everyone else is.
A few obvious gimmes to avoid next time: 1) A deliverable objective. 225mph made no sense yet is responsible for large amounts of the cost 2) Decouple from daily politics. We're building this infrastructure, here is the market price for the land, no we won't be swayed by legal idiocy or political bunfights. How much of the cost overruns have been caused by internal political rows inside the various Tory governments? 3) Don't be zealots. HS2 has an absurd contract for infrastructure which leaves the contractor liable for all kinds of lunacy decades into the future. Which means design choices costing vast amounts now to mitigate down the line private sector risk. This is a government project - we bear the risk regardless of how evil certain politicians thought state subsidy was
If Starmer wants to actually get things done, get Road Construction Units formed and actually get on with these stalled for decades projects. Cut the costs by having RCUs permanently busy. Never mind "we're stopping wiring the Midland Mainline because it costs money now". Wires means cheaper trains, lower running costs and higher economic activity. Just get on with the frakking thing already.
This is why a change of government is needed. No, not back to the Jake Berry's of this world who utterly arsed things up. We are broken and we are lost. Unable to do the things that France and Spain and Belgium and Germany do, falling further and further behind whilst still claiming to be better than them.
Ask Macron for ideas how to get things built.
It’s been discussed on here before and links provided showing that there is a bit of a myth about us being singularly bad at infrastructure projects compared to Germany etc.
We also have the disadvantage compared to France, Germany and Spain for example of having a smaller country with a large population and high land costs which doesn’t help at all.
The thing that annoys me most about infrastructure is that you know that the price when first mooted will always be inflated hugely by the end. There are reasons for this, such as making (expensive) changes during construction and gold plating stuff, but its so inevitable.
It's like politics. Provide a realistic estimate, and you'll never get a contract; issue a realistic manifesto, and you'll never be elected.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
It’s anti aspiration, it leads to a de facto caste system.
Will you be encouraging or discouraging your children to go into law?
I will support whatever they choose, I’ve told them if they work hard they can achieve anything, look at me, the grandson of humble immigrants and how much I’ve achieved with hard work.
FWIW my eldest is thinking about becoming a doctor like his grandfather, my youngest is thinking about something physics/maths/F1 related, like me he loves physics, numbers, and F1.
I’ve told them if they are lazy, only the University of Oxford will accept them and they’ll spend the rest of their lives flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Absolutely right, and I would do the same but criticising people for following their parents’ careers is a bit blinkered as, in that case, we have no idea if Sir David Frost told his boy “you must become a journalist or else” or he put him in a position to choose their own way with the best possible preparation and he chose journalism as he had seen it from the inside and liked what he saw.
It’s very easy to cry “nepotism” but usually it’s a lot less sinister than nepotism implies.
I have skin in this game. My son has a distinction in his MA from the very prestigious Cardiff School of Journalism, but his dad is a scumbag filth pessant. Up against even a tongue tied media royalty Dimbleby, the Dimbleby gets the gig.
My lad is doing OK, but all the cards are stacked against him.
Quite right, if you only pay for a second class stamp you should expect only a second class service.
If you want your mail to arrive quicker and a first class service pay for first class stamps and postage
We had about twenty items of post two days ago after days with nothing. Note we do not live in Wick, or the Isles of Scilly. We live in Southern England. The postal service is broken.
Likewise americanophile. Despite all its social problems the US was great in several important ways and now it is a lot less great, thanks to the malign would-be dictator in the White House. I regret that massively.
Indeed but by the end of 2029 not impossible we could have US President Buttigieg and French President Bardella and UK PM Farage in which case the polling might look rather different, with Labour and LD voters loving the US again and Reform voters loving France
Nonsense. The POTUS will be President Eyeliner or President Trump spawn.
On current polling Buttigieg would almost certainly beat Vance or Trump Jr in 2028
Both France and the UK also need to co operate to reduce the boats coming across the Channel and Mediterranean.
Still a clear Brexit divide though, a majority of Labour and LD voters prefer a closer relationship with the USA than France while a plurality of Tory voters and a majority of Reform voters prefer a closer relationship with the USA
I'd say it makes more sense for the UK to have a closer relationshio with Gernany
Economically maybe, in terms of military matters and migrant control France is where the closer relationship is needed
"Britain is a crime-ridden hell hole" - yes mate, because you defunded the police and the criminal justice system. "taxes are sky high" - because you broke the economy with cuts and put the taxes up "a benefits system bringing the world's poor to our shores with no control" - asylum seekers don't get benefits mate, but even if that was true whose policies in government created the vast increase in arrivals? "He [Farage] doesn't change his views when the political weather changes" - unlike Berry apparently
This is the problem that Reform have. If the very best/worst Tories join Reform and say "this country is broken, vote for us" when do the voters say "but you are the fuckers who broke it"?
We also have Kemi Badenoch out swinging this morning on welfare - strange how I don't remember the last Conservative Government tightening up rules on welfare to deny payments to foreigners or "handing out taxpayer-funded cars for conditions like constipation.”
I have more respect for Jake Berry. Ewwww, that was nasty to type.
The start of any recovery process is to accept that you are in a mess and need help. Kemi and the remaining Tories can't stomach the idea that they did anything wrong, and the endless "Labour have broken this" guff is met with deaf ears for obvious reasons.
I was going to ask if there has ever been a leader as tone deaf, arrogant and politically stunted as Kemi Badenoch. Then I remembered Liz Truss.
Any politician worth his salt should be out on a boat in the Channel pestering illegal migrants today. Let's hope it is a safer venture than a previous light aircraft stunt.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
I'm curious if there's an age split on the sending of cards. The only people I know who send cards nowadays are either old people, or young fogies who are old at heart.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
"Britain is a crime-ridden hell hole" - yes mate, because you defunded the police and the criminal justice system. "taxes are sky high" - because you broke the economy with cuts and put the taxes up "a benefits system bringing the world's poor to our shores with no control" - asylum seekers don't get benefits mate, but even if that was true whose policies in government created the vast increase in arrivals? "He [Farage] doesn't change his views when the political weather changes" - unlike Berry apparently
This is the problem that Reform have. If the very best/worst Tories join Reform and say "this country is broken, vote for us" when do the voters say "but you are the fuckers who broke it"?
We also have Kemi Badenoch out swinging this morning on welfare - strange how I don't remember the last Conservative Government tightening up rules on welfare to deny payments to foreigners or "handing out taxpayer-funded cars for conditions like constipation.”
I have more respect for Jake Berry. Ewwww, that was nasty to type.
The start of any recovery process is to accept that you are in a mess and need help. Kemi and the remaining Tories can't stomach the idea that they did anything wrong, and the endless "Labour have broken this" guff is met with deaf ears for obvious reasons.
I was going to ask if there has ever been a leader as tone deaf, arrogant and politically stunted as Kemi Badenoch. Then I remembered Liz Truss.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
Wilfred Frost has a PPE degree from Oxford, he just chose media rather than being an MP or a banker (his grandfather was also the 17th Duke of Norfolk so he has blue blood as well as being media royalty).
Fred Dimbleby edited Cherwell, the Oxford University student newspaper
On topic - I'm a closet Francophile (don't know why - maybe I like to play as them in Hearts of Iron) so I certainly think the Entente Cordiale should be resurrected.
On that note I thank everyone for my time here, and I fully deserve the ban hammer that TSE is about to rain down on me.......
I am a Francophile too, I love the French language plus La Marseillaise is the best national anthem in the world.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
It’s anti aspiration, it leads to a de facto caste system.
Will you be encouraging or discouraging your children to go into law?
I will support whatever they choose, I’ve told them if they work hard they can achieve anything, look at me, the grandson of humble immigrants and how much I’ve achieved with hard work.
FWIW my eldest is thinking about becoming a doctor like his grandfather, my youngest is thinking about something physics/maths/F1 related, like me he loves physics, numbers, and F1.
I’ve told them if they are lazy, only the University of Oxford will accept them and they’ll spend the rest of their lives flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Absolutely right, and I would do the same but criticising people for following their parents’ careers is a bit blinkered as, in that case, we have no idea if Sir David Frost told his boy “you must become a journalist or else” or he put him in a position to choose their own way with the best possible preparation and he chose journalism as he had seen it from the inside and liked what he saw.
It’s very easy to cry “nepotism” but usually it’s a lot less sinister than nepotism implies.
I have skin in this game. My son has a distinction in his MA from the very prestigious Cardiff School of Journalism, but his dad is a scumbag filth pessant. Up against even a tongue tied media royalty Dimbleby, the Dimbleby gets the gig.
My lad is doing OK, but all the cards are stacked against him.
I’m sure they are, much as I’m sure that if your son and Dimbleby both decided to go into your career in your part of the world and the interviewers said, “ah, young MexicanBob, your father has done some great work in this county, unlike that wet London posh boy Dimbleby, have the job.”
I know that HS2 is the shittiest of shit sandwiches. It should be a study in how to fuck up infrastructure projects so that we do it differently next time. Because there has to be a next time. We have stopped investing in new infrastructure. We're not building new railways, we're barely electrifying and modernising the old ones. We're not building airports or motorways. And everyone else is.
A few obvious gimmes to avoid next time: 1) A deliverable objective. 225mph made no sense yet is responsible for large amounts of the cost 2) Decouple from daily politics. We're building this infrastructure, here is the market price for the land, no we won't be swayed by legal idiocy or political bunfights. How much of the cost overruns have been caused by internal political rows inside the various Tory governments? 3) Don't be zealots. HS2 has an absurd contract for infrastructure which leaves the contractor liable for all kinds of lunacy decades into the future. Which means design choices costing vast amounts now to mitigate down the line private sector risk. This is a government project - we bear the risk regardless of how evil certain politicians thought state subsidy was
If Starmer wants to actually get things done, get Road Construction Units formed and actually get on with these stalled for decades projects. Cut the costs by having RCUs permanently busy. Never mind "we're stopping wiring the Midland Mainline because it costs money now". Wires means cheaper trains, lower running costs and higher economic activity. Just get on with the frakking thing already.
This is why a change of government is needed. No, not back to the Jake Berry's of this world who utterly arsed things up. We are broken and we are lost. Unable to do the things that France and Spain and Belgium and Germany do, falling further and further behind whilst still claiming to be better than them.
Ask Macron for ideas how to get things built.
It’s been discussed on here before and links provided showing that there is a bit of a myth about us being singularly bad at infrastructure projects compared to Germany etc.
We also have the disadvantage compared to France, Germany and Spain for example of having a smaller country with a large population and high land costs which doesn’t help at all.
The thing that annoys me most about infrastructure is that you know that the price when first mooted will always be inflated hugely by the end. There are reasons for this, such as making (expensive) changes during construction and gold plating stuff, but its so inevitable.
Not always the case - some of our biggest projects in Scotland have come in under budget, and early. There is quite a lot of work on optimism bias, and I think our anticipation of issues is a bit better than elsewhere.
A9 dualling is an interesting example - it's taking a lot longer to deliver than suggested, and there have been some delays on the actual construction of the segments, but they tend to be minor and recognised very early in the process - like Tomatin/Moy extending from end '27 to start '28.
He's maybe the only politician for whom, over the past ten years or so, my opinion has substantially improved. There are several for whom my opinion has shifted the other way!
Maybe Miliband to a lesser extent - I always had time for him, but he's been a much more effective and sincere communicator since not being leader.
Quite right, if you only pay for a second class stamp you should expect only a second class service.
If you want your mail to arrive quicker and a first class service pay for first class stamps and postage
We had about twenty items of post two days ago after days with nothing. Note we do not live in Wick, or the Isles of Scilly. We live in Southern England. The postal service is broken.
So you still get post then
We still have an excellent postal service. Every morning our postie empties the nearby postbox, drives round delivering bulky items, then walks round delivering letters and small packages, normally around the same time each day? Are we just lucky?
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
Yep, but I don’t really have a problem with nepotism, it’s been the case for most of humanity that people follow their family trades and get into roles and places because of their family connections - generations of farmers sons becoming farmers, children of teachers becoming teachers, lawyers the same, politicians was ever thus, look at the Romans.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
It’s anti aspiration, it leads to a de facto caste system.
Will you be encouraging or discouraging your children to go into law?
I will support whatever they choose, I’ve told them if they work hard they can achieve anything, look at me, the grandson of humble immigrants and how much I’ve achieved with hard work.
FWIW my eldest is thinking about becoming a doctor like his grandfather, my youngest is thinking about something physics/maths/F1 related, like me he loves physics, numbers, and F1.
I’ve told them if they are lazy, only the University of Oxford will accept them and they’ll spend the rest of their lives flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Absolutely right, and I would do the same but criticising people for following their parents’ careers is a bit blinkered as, in that case, we have no idea if Sir David Frost told his boy “you must become a journalist or else” or he put him in a position to choose their own way with the best possible preparation and he chose journalism as he had seen it from the inside and liked what he saw.
It’s very easy to cry “nepotism” but usually it’s a lot less sinister than nepotism implies.
I have skin in this game. My son has a distinction in his MA from the very prestigious Cardiff School of Journalism, but his dad is a scumbag filth pessant. Up against even a tongue tied media royalty Dimbleby, the Dimbleby gets the gig.
My lad is doing OK, but all the cards are stacked against him.
Yes, he went to Cardiff not Oxford when graduates of the latter like Dimbleby Jr and Cambridge dominate national news media, nothing to do with his parentage otherwise
Quite right, if you only pay for a second class stamp you should expect only a second class service.
If you want your mail to arrive quicker and a first class service pay for first class stamps and postage
We had about twenty items of post two days ago after days with nothing. Note we do not live in Wick, or the Isles of Scilly. We live in Southern England. The postal service is broken.
So you still get post then
We do but its like the old idea of a second post. I used to live in a village (pop 2000 ish) in the 80's and 90's when cities still had regular second postal deliveries. We laughed at the idea.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
I'm curious if there's an age split on the sending of cards. The only people I know who send cards nowadays are either old people, or young fogies who are old at heart.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
Yes so older people still send cards and will use RM to send them. I tend to send online Christmas cards now and put holiday pictures on Facebook too but my parents still send Christmas and birthday cards and postcards by post. I also send birthday cards by post still and if the friend or relative having the birthday is not nearby and it is not a big birthday we won't see them in person for it
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
What can be described as nepotism is unavoidable. This is why working towards equality of opportunity is vital but also never ending. It happens at every level, from children of street level drug dealers being more likely to pick up that trade themselves to children of the rich and famous finding ways to be rich and famous.
For the fortunate the double advantage is obvious: OTOH genetics, and OTOH network/leg up/work ethic/bank of mum and dad/start off based in agreeable bit of London/education/who you meet/circles you move in.
This is ineradicable. I have lived for the last 35 years in a wonderful but rather neglected part of the north. The state education system (all my children went through it) is pretty decent but not in the same league in aspiration, confidence and contacts as to begin equalising.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
The first class delivery target is 93% next day, not 90%, not that they have been achieving it of late. To.have such a high chance of next day delivery from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else is still pretty impressive, and few people stop to consider what has to get done every evening and night to make this possible. Look around the world and we still have a pretty good postal service by comparison, even if the prices they charge have risen to ridiculous levels since privatisation. Aside from the occasional greetings card, nowadays it's Amazon packets that people still eagerly await, and sorting offices are full of differently shaped and sized packets, which is a bigger challenge than dealing with mostly letters as in the past.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
My wife is signed up to receive a service from a company that will remain nameless. She has selected paperless billing, for which she receives a discount of €6. She receives three items of post a month. An invoice, a statement of account and a receipt. They don't appear to have a process to email out PDFs of these, or any sort of online portal to view them.
I'm not sure what they think "paperless billing" means.
I know that HS2 is the shittiest of shit sandwiches. It should be a study in how to fuck up infrastructure projects so that we do it differently next time. Because there has to be a next time. We have stopped investing in new infrastructure. We're not building new railways, we're barely electrifying and modernising the old ones. We're not building airports or motorways. And everyone else is.
A few obvious gimmes to avoid next time: 1) A deliverable objective. 225mph made no sense yet is responsible for large amounts of the cost 2) Decouple from daily politics. We're building this infrastructure, here is the market price for the land, no we won't be swayed by legal idiocy or political bunfights. How much of the cost overruns have been caused by internal political rows inside the various Tory governments? 3) Don't be zealots. HS2 has an absurd contract for infrastructure which leaves the contractor liable for all kinds of lunacy decades into the future. Which means design choices costing vast amounts now to mitigate down the line private sector risk. This is a government project - we bear the risk regardless of how evil certain politicians thought state subsidy was
If Starmer wants to actually get things done, get Road Construction Units formed and actually get on with these stalled for decades projects. Cut the costs by having RCUs permanently busy. Never mind "we're stopping wiring the Midland Mainline because it costs money now". Wires means cheaper trains, lower running costs and higher economic activity. Just get on with the frakking thing already.
This is why a change of government is needed. No, not back to the Jake Berry's of this world who utterly arsed things up. We are broken and we are lost. Unable to do the things that France and Spain and Belgium and Germany do, falling further and further behind whilst still claiming to be better than them.
Ask Macron for ideas how to get things built.
It’s been discussed on here before and links provided showing that there is a bit of a myth about us being singularly bad at infrastructure projects compared to Germany etc.
We also have the disadvantage compared to France, Germany and Spain for example of having a smaller country with a large population and high land costs which doesn’t help at all.
The thing that annoys me most about infrastructure is that you know that the price when first mooted will always be inflated hugely by the end. There are reasons for this, such as making (expensive) changes during construction and gold plating stuff, but its so inevitable.
Not always the case - some of our biggest projects in Scotland have come in under budget, and early. There is quite a lot of work on optimism bias, and I think our anticipation of issues is a bit better than elsewhere.
A9 dualling is an interesting example - it's taking a lot longer to deliver than suggested, and there have been some delays on the actual construction of the segments, but they tend to be minor and recognised very early in the process - like Tomatin/Moy extending from end '27 to start '28.
Most delays have been political, such as A9 and A96 being delayed when the Greens were in government, or when politicians and civil servants get involved in decisions that should have been left to engineers, such as ferries.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
The first class delivery target is 93% next day, not 90%, not that they have been achieving it of late. To.have such a high chance of next day delivery from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else is still pretty impressive, and few people stop to consider what has to get done every evening and night to make this possible. Look around the world and we still have a pretty good postal service by comparison, even if the prices they charge have risen to ridiculous levels since privatisation.
Doesn't explain where my post was in the last week.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
The first class delivery target is 93% next day, not 90%, not that they have been achieving it of late. To.have such a high chance of next day delivery from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else is still pretty impressive, and few people stop to consider what has to get done every evening and night to make this possible. Look around the world and we still have a pretty good postal service by comparison, even if the prices they charge have risen to ridiculous levels since privatisation.
Doesn't explain where my post was in the last week.
Have you checked your fence? That's where my post is.
Quite right, if you only pay for a second class stamp you should expect only a second class service.
If you want your mail to arrive quicker and a first class service pay for first class stamps and postage
We had about twenty items of post two days ago after days with nothing. Note we do not live in Wick, or the Isles of Scilly. We live in Southern England. The postal service is broken.
So you still get post then
We still have an excellent postal service. Every morning our postie empties the nearby postbox, drives round delivering bulky items, then walks round delivering letters and small packages, normally around the same time each day? Are we just lucky?
No, often that is the case here too.
When we order from Amazon etc often they will ring the bell, wait 5 or 10 seconds at most then dump the delivery and sod off.
Royal Mail posties however if you are not in will leave a note and leave the package at the backdoor where it is less likely to be stolen.
There are exceptions but I still prefer the heirs of Postman Pat to the timed to the second employees of postman Bezos
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
The first class delivery target is 93% next day, not 90%, not that they have been achieving it of late. To.have such a high chance of next day delivery from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else is still pretty impressive, and few people stop to consider what has to get done every evening and night to make this possible. Look around the world and we still have a pretty good postal service by comparison, even if the prices they charge have risen to ridiculous levels since privatisation.
Doesn't explain where my post was in the last week.
Have you checked your fence? That's where my post is.
Both physically, and for parcels sent by Evri.
No - as I said we received about 20 items in one delivery. Kind of suspect thats a weeks post built up at the sorting office...
Quite right, if you only pay for a second class stamp you should expect only a second class service.
If you want your mail to arrive quicker and a first class service pay for first class stamps and postage
We had about twenty items of post two days ago after days with nothing. Note we do not live in Wick, or the Isles of Scilly. We live in Southern England. The postal service is broken.
So you still get post then
We still have an excellent postal service. Every morning our postie empties the nearby postbox, drives round delivering bulky items, then walks round delivering letters and small packages, normally around the same time each day? Are we just lucky?
No, often that is the case here too.
When we order from Amazon etc often they will ring the bell, wait 5 or 10 seconds at most then dump the delivery and sod off.
Royal Mail posties however if you are not in will leave a note and leave the package at the backdoor where it is less likely to be stolen.
There are exceptions but I still prefer the heirs of Postman Pat to the timed to the second employees of postman Bezos
Our best delivery person is the Evri chap who puts packages safely in the greenhouse is we are not in. I appreciate that not everyone has the same good service from Evri.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
Several of my elderly relatives (albeit a decreasing number) either don't use email or don't like them. They like having physical letters to read and re-read.
"Britain is a crime-ridden hell hole" - yes mate, because you defunded the police and the criminal justice system. "taxes are sky high" - because you broke the economy with cuts and put the taxes up "a benefits system bringing the world's poor to our shores with no control" - asylum seekers don't get benefits mate, but even if that was true whose policies in government created the vast increase in arrivals? "He [Farage] doesn't change his views when the political weather changes" - unlike Berry apparently
This is the problem that Reform have. If the very best/worst Tories join Reform and say "this country is broken, vote for us" when do the voters say "but you are the fuckers who broke it"?
We also have Kemi Badenoch out swinging this morning on welfare - strange how I don't remember the last Conservative Government tightening up rules on welfare to deny payments to foreigners or "handing out taxpayer-funded cars for conditions like constipation.”
I have more respect for Jake Berry. Ewwww, that was nasty to type.
The start of any recovery process is to accept that you are in a mess and need help. Kemi and the remaining Tories can't stomach the idea that they did anything wrong, and the endless "Labour have broken this" guff is met with deaf ears for obvious reasons.
I was going to ask if there has ever been a leader as tone deaf, arrogant and politically stunted as Kemi Badenoch. Then I remembered Liz Truss.
Kemi has accepted the Tories in government did things wrong. Cameron and May weren't anti woke enough, Boris was too kind to immigrants, too accepting of net zero and spent too much on welfare, and Truss and Sunak didn't cut spending enough either
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
I'm curious if there's an age split on the sending of cards. The only people I know who send cards nowadays are either old people, or young fogies who are old at heart.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
Yes so older people still send cards and will use RM to send them. I tend to send online Christmas cards now and put holiday pictures on Facebook too but my parents still send Christmas and birthday cards and postcards by post. I also send birthday cards by post still and if the friend or relative having the birthday is not nearby and it is not a big birthday we won't see them in person for it
My family have stopped sending all cards
We tend to express happy birthday, anniversary etc on our Whats app or facebook pages
Most everything we do today is by e mail and bcs payments
Indeed my daughters house sale and purchase, plus survey is done entirely by e mail
We receive virtually no post and to be honest, for a couple of oldies, we are quite proud how we have embraced modern tech communications
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
The first class delivery target is 93% next day, not 90%, not that they have been achieving it of late. To.have such a high chance of next day delivery from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else is still pretty impressive, and few people stop to consider what has to get done every evening and night to make this possible. Look around the world and we still have a pretty good postal service by comparison, even if the prices they charge have risen to ridiculous levels since privatisation.
Doesn't explain where my post was in the last week.
Have you checked your fence? That's where my post is.
Both physically, and for parcels sent by Evri.
A postal anecdote:
Many decades ago, my dad got a pre-Christmas call from the owner of a haulage company he used. "You haven't paid the money you owed," the man said, "and I need to pay the men their Christmas bonusses!"
My dad said he had sent a cheque; he phoned the bank, cancelled the old cheque, and drove up to the haulage company to drop off a new cheque. Then he thought nothing more of it.
Many months later he got another phone call from the owner of the haulage company. Laughing, he said that they had been widening the entrance to their depot and found another postbox in the wall. In it were a load of letters from when a relief postman had been on duty, and who had put letters in the wrong box. One of the letters included my dad's cheque.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
Several of my elderly relatives (albeit a decreasing number) either don't use email or don't like them. They like having physical letters to read and re-read.
Indeed I still know over 80s who don't even have internet
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
The first class delivery target is 93% next day, not 90%, not that they have been achieving it of late. To.have such a high chance of next day delivery from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else is still pretty impressive, and few people stop to consider what has to get done every evening and night to make this possible. Look around the world and we still have a pretty good postal service by comparison, even if the prices they charge have risen to ridiculous levels since privatisation.
Doesn't explain where my post was in the last week.
Have you checked your fence? That's where my post is.
Quite right, if you only pay for a second class stamp you should expect only a second class service.
If you want your mail to arrive quicker and a first class service pay for first class stamps and postage
We had about twenty items of post two days ago after days with nothing. Note we do not live in Wick, or the Isles of Scilly. We live in Southern England. The postal service is broken.
So you still get post then
We still have an excellent postal service. Every morning our postie empties the nearby postbox, drives round delivering bulky items, then walks round delivering letters and small packages, normally around the same time each day? Are we just lucky?
No, often that is the case here too.
When we order from Amazon etc often they will ring the bell, wait 5 or 10 seconds at most then dump the delivery and sod off.
Royal Mail posties however if you are not in will leave a note and leave the package at the backdoor where it is less likely to be stolen.
There are exceptions but I still prefer the heirs of Postman Pat to the timed to the second employees of postman Bezos
Our best delivery person is the Evri chap who puts packages safely in the greenhouse is we are not in. I appreciate that not everyone has the same good service from Evri.
Evri is utterly diabolical. As Hermes in the UK before, they were no better. What I don't get is across Europe Hermes provide a reliable delivery service using uniformed trained staff in liveried vehicles, whereas in the UK they just dump the job on untrained people who go out in their own beat up vehicles on some sort of dodgy self employed contract and just have to make the best of it.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
The first class delivery target is 93% next day, not 90%, not that they have been achieving it of late. To.have such a high chance of next day delivery from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else is still pretty impressive, and few people stop to consider what has to get done every evening and night to make this possible. Look around the world and we still have a pretty good postal service by comparison, even if the prices they charge have risen to ridiculous levels since privatisation.
Doesn't explain where my post was in the last week.
Need little trackers to see where they enjoy their holidays.
I once sent an Ebay parcel to Austria, which enjoyed a nice little holiday in Australia on the way (it disappeared for a couple of weeks after tracking showed it arriving in Australia, but did eventually get delivered to the correct location in Austria).
I'd even printed out the label, so it wasn't my (terrible) handwriting!
I know that HS2 is the shittiest of shit sandwiches. It should be a study in how to fuck up infrastructure projects so that we do it differently next time. Because there has to be a next time. We have stopped investing in new infrastructure. We're not building new railways, we're barely electrifying and modernising the old ones. We're not building airports or motorways. And everyone else is.
A few obvious gimmes to avoid next time: 1) A deliverable objective. 225mph made no sense yet is responsible for large amounts of the cost 2) Decouple from daily politics. We're building this infrastructure, here is the market price for the land, no we won't be swayed by legal idiocy or political bunfights. How much of the cost overruns have been caused by internal political rows inside the various Tory governments? 3) Don't be zealots. HS2 has an absurd contract for infrastructure which leaves the contractor liable for all kinds of lunacy decades into the future. Which means design choices costing vast amounts now to mitigate down the line private sector risk. This is a government project - we bear the risk regardless of how evil certain politicians thought state subsidy was
If Starmer wants to actually get things done, get Road Construction Units formed and actually get on with these stalled for decades projects. Cut the costs by having RCUs permanently busy. Never mind "we're stopping wiring the Midland Mainline because it costs money now". Wires means cheaper trains, lower running costs and higher economic activity. Just get on with the frakking thing already.
This is why a change of government is needed. No, not back to the Jake Berry's of this world who utterly arsed things up. We are broken and we are lost. Unable to do the things that France and Spain and Belgium and Germany do, falling further and further behind whilst still claiming to be better than them.
Ask Macron for ideas how to get things built.
It’s been discussed on here before and links provided showing that there is a bit of a myth about us being singularly bad at infrastructure projects compared to Germany etc.
We also have the disadvantage compared to France, Germany and Spain for example of having a smaller country with a large population and high land costs which doesn’t help at all.
The thing that annoys me most about infrastructure is that you know that the price when first mooted will always be inflated hugely by the end. There are reasons for this, such as making (expensive) changes during construction and gold plating stuff, but its so inevitable.
Not always the case - some of our biggest projects in Scotland have come in under budget, and early. There is quite a lot of work on optimism bias, and I think our anticipation of issues is a bit better than elsewhere.
A9 dualling is an interesting example - it's taking a lot longer to deliver than suggested, and there have been some delays on the actual construction of the segments, but they tend to be minor and recognised very early in the process - like Tomatin/Moy extending from end '27 to start '28.
Most delays have been political, such as A9 and A96 being delayed when the Greens were in government, or when politicians and civil servants get involved in decisions that should have been left to engineers, such as ferries.
A9 dualling is a disgrace to Holyrood politicians
As far back as the 70's it was talked about, and for anyone who knows the road from Perth to Inverness it is shockingly dangerous
Mind you, why should the Highlands receive road improvement benefits when the important voters are in the central belt ?
Quite right, if you only pay for a second class stamp you should expect only a second class service.
If you want your mail to arrive quicker and a first class service pay for first class stamps and postage
We had about twenty items of post two days ago after days with nothing. Note we do not live in Wick, or the Isles of Scilly. We live in Southern England. The postal service is broken.
So you still get post then
We still have an excellent postal service. Every morning our postie empties the nearby postbox, drives round delivering bulky items, then walks round delivering letters and small packages, normally around the same time each day? Are we just lucky?
No, often that is the case here too.
When we order from Amazon etc often they will ring the bell, wait 5 or 10 seconds at most then dump the delivery and sod off.
Royal Mail posties however if you are not in will leave a note and leave the package at the backdoor where it is less likely to be stolen.
There are exceptions but I still prefer the heirs of Postman Pat to the timed to the second employees of postman Bezos
Our best delivery person is the Evri chap who puts packages safely in the greenhouse is we are not in. I appreciate that not everyone has the same good service from Evri.
Evri is utterly diabolical. As Hermes in the UK before, they were no better. What I don't get is across Europe Hermes provide a reliable delivery service using uniformed trained staff in liveried vehicles, whereas in the UK they just dump the job on untrained people who go out in their own beat up vehicles on some sort of dodgy self employed contract and just have to make the best of it.
The local Evri depot is next to our local Screwfix - I've observed the parcel transfer from lorry to cars there and all I can say is that it's astonishing that anything ever arrives.
On topic - I'm a closet Francophile (don't know why - maybe I like to play as them in Hearts of Iron) so I certainly think the Entente Cordiale should be resurrected.
On that note I thank everyone for my time here, and I fully deserve the ban hammer that TSE is about to rain down on me.......
Agreed. There's simply no other option for our security than to forget the Boris and Lord Frost years of petulance.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
I'm curious if there's an age split on the sending of cards. The only people I know who send cards nowadays are either old people, or young fogies who are old at heart.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
Yes so older people still send cards and will use RM to send them. I tend to send online Christmas cards now and put holiday pictures on Facebook too but my parents still send Christmas and birthday cards and postcards by post. I also send birthday cards by post still and if the friend or relative having the birthday is not nearby and it is not a big birthday we won't see them in person for it
Has anyone worked out how to hang on-line Christmas cards on strings around the room, or display them on mantelpieces, cupboard tops and so on? Most of them seem to have some sort of animation. Sending holiday pictures on Facebook isn't a good idea, unless you have a very restricted page, because it demonstrates to all and sundry that your house is empty, and the evilly inclined can have easy access.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
The first class delivery target is 93% next day, not 90%, not that they have been achieving it of late. To.have such a high chance of next day delivery from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else is still pretty impressive, and few people stop to consider what has to get done every evening and night to make this possible. Look around the world and we still have a pretty good postal service by comparison, even if the prices they charge have risen to ridiculous levels since privatisation.
Doesn't explain where my post was in the last week.
It will be staff shortage. Your walk is uncovered, they couldn't persuade other staff to take it on as overtime after their own walk, and the manager didn't fancy or wasn't able to take it out him or herself. So the mail sat on the prep frame until they could find some cover for the walk
Quite right, if you only pay for a second class stamp you should expect only a second class service.
If you want your mail to arrive quicker and a first class service pay for first class stamps and postage
We had about twenty items of post two days ago after days with nothing. Note we do not live in Wick, or the Isles of Scilly. We live in Southern England. The postal service is broken.
So you still get post then
We still have an excellent postal service. Every morning our postie empties the nearby postbox, drives round delivering bulky items, then walks round delivering letters and small packages, normally around the same time each day? Are we just lucky?
No, often that is the case here too.
When we order from Amazon etc often they will ring the bell, wait 5 or 10 seconds at most then dump the delivery and sod off.
Royal Mail posties however if you are not in will leave a note and leave the package at the backdoor where it is less likely to be stolen.
There are exceptions but I still prefer the heirs of Postman Pat to the timed to the second employees of postman Bezos
They would have a problem leaving it at our back door, as there is a locked security side gate
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
I'm curious if there's an age split on the sending of cards. The only people I know who send cards nowadays are either old people, or young fogies who are old at heart.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
Yes so older people still send cards and will use RM to send them. I tend to send online Christmas cards now and put holiday pictures on Facebook too but my parents still send Christmas and birthday cards and postcards by post. I also send birthday cards by post still and if the friend or relative having the birthday is not nearby and it is not a big birthday we won't see them in person for it
My family have stopped sending all cards
We tend to express happy birthday, anniversary etc on our Whats app or facebook pages
Most everything we do today is by e mail and bcs payments
Indeed my daughters house sale and purchase, plus survey is done entirely by e mail
We receive virtually no post and to be honest, for a couple of oldies, we are quite proud how we have embraced modern tech communications
It makes me slightly sad that greetings cards - Christmas cards, especially - are disappearing. Part of Christmas used to be the cards around the fireplace. I know it was all essentially a waste of paper and effort, but so is so much of life. Christmas cards bring me disproportionate amounts of joy. Birthday cards, too - I love the rhythm of the sideboard filling with cards five times a year.
I am on holiday in some distant EU hinterland so the only UK News available is Sky. Although I have Sky at home SkyNews is not a channel I watch. But man alive, is it poor?
My main observation is the Chief Anchor, a characterless droid, is David Frost's son. I also note that David Dimbleby's son is a reporter on ITN. It's not what you know but who you know.
It’s terrible, luckily the party of the people is absolutely against this nepotism going on in politics.
What can be described as nepotism is unavoidable. This is why working towards equality of opportunity is vital but also never ending. It happens at every level, from children of street level drug dealers being more likely to pick up that trade themselves to children of the rich and famous finding ways to be rich and famous.
For the fortunate the double advantage is obvious: OTOH genetics, and OTOH network/leg up/work ethic/bank of mum and dad/start off based in agreeable bit of London/education/who you meet/circles you move in.
This is ineradicable. I have lived for the last 35 years in a wonderful but rather neglected part of the north. The state education system (all my children went through it) is pretty decent but not in the same league in aspiration, confidence and contacts as to begin equalising.
A third factor in nepotism is simply understanding that a particular vocation exists. If your father is a writer and your mother a long-distance lorry driver, granddad an MP and granny a doctor, then you know from a young age that it is possible to do these things, and what the pathway is.
'The truth is that Jake never truly recovered from the downfall of Liz Truss - a prime minister whose brief and chaotic tenure he enthusiastically supported.'
Unsurprisingly, Jake Berry's local Conservative association not hugely impressed by his defection to Reform.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
I'm curious if there's an age split on the sending of cards. The only people I know who send cards nowadays are either old people, or young fogies who are old at heart.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
Yes so older people still send cards and will use RM to send them. I tend to send online Christmas cards now and put holiday pictures on Facebook too but my parents still send Christmas and birthday cards and postcards by post. I also send birthday cards by post still and if the friend or relative having the birthday is not nearby and it is not a big birthday we won't see them in person for it
Has anyone worked out how to hang on-line Christmas cards on strings around the room, or display them on mantelpieces, cupboard tops and so on? Most of them seem to have some sort of animation. Sending holiday pictures on Facebook isn't a good idea, unless you have a very restricted page, because it demonstrates to all and sundry that your house is empty, and the evilly inclined can have easy access.
For celebs yes where they often know where their house is, less so for ordinary people
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
I'm curious if there's an age split on the sending of cards. The only people I know who send cards nowadays are either old people, or young fogies who are old at heart.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
Yes so older people still send cards and will use RM to send them. I tend to send online Christmas cards now and put holiday pictures on Facebook too but my parents still send Christmas and birthday cards and postcards by post. I also send birthday cards by post still and if the friend or relative having the birthday is not nearby and it is not a big birthday we won't see them in person for it
Has anyone worked out how to hang on-line Christmas cards on strings around the room, or display them on mantelpieces, cupboard tops and so on? Most of them seem to have some sort of animation. Sending holiday pictures on Facebook isn't a good idea, unless you have a very restricted page, because it demonstrates to all and sundry that your house is empty, and the evilly inclined can have easy access.
Create a slideshow from them and send it to your flat screen TV
'The truth is that Jake never truly recovered from the downfall of Liz Truss - a prime minister whose brief and chaotic tenure he enthusiastically supported.'
Unsurprisingly, Jake Berry's local Conservative association not hugely impressed by his defection to Reform.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
I'm curious if there's an age split on the sending of cards. The only people I know who send cards nowadays are either old people, or young fogies who are old at heart.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
Yes so older people still send cards and will use RM to send them. I tend to send online Christmas cards now and put holiday pictures on Facebook too but my parents still send Christmas and birthday cards and postcards by post. I also send birthday cards by post still and if the friend or relative having the birthday is not nearby and it is not a big birthday we won't see them in person for it
My family have stopped sending all cards
We tend to express happy birthday, anniversary etc on our Whats app or facebook pages
Most everything we do today is by e mail and bcs payments
Indeed my daughters house sale and purchase, plus survey is done entirely by e mail
We receive virtually no post and to be honest, for a couple of oldies, we are quite proud how we have embraced modern tech communications
Light the beacons of Gondor, Stokes wind the toss and chooses to bat.
Is “wind” an alternative past tense for “won”?
Autocorrect.
Autocorrect could do with some of this artificial intelligence we keep hearing about.
I turned mine off years ago. I'd rather make my own mistakes.
Mine always puts an apostrophe in Lib Dem’s
Gave up trying to change it
I don't mind being warned that I've made a mistake when typing. I do object to the little imp hiding in the computer assuming he knows better than me what I'm talking about.
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
I'm curious if there's an age split on the sending of cards. The only people I know who send cards nowadays are either old people, or young fogies who are old at heart.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
Yes so older people still send cards and will use RM to send them. I tend to send online Christmas cards now and put holiday pictures on Facebook too but my parents still send Christmas and birthday cards and postcards by post. I also send birthday cards by post still and if the friend or relative having the birthday is not nearby and it is not a big birthday we won't see them in person for it
My family have stopped sending all cards
We tend to express happy birthday, anniversary etc on our Whats app or facebook pages
Most everything we do today is by e mail and bcs payments
Indeed my daughters house sale and purchase, plus survey is done entirely by e mail
We receive virtually no post and to be honest, for a couple of oldies, we are quite proud how we have embraced modern tech communications
You still can't send parcels online
Yes, you can
Many parcel companies offer an online service to book and collect from your home
Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...
Why would anyone use snail mail?
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
I'm curious if there's an age split on the sending of cards. The only people I know who send cards nowadays are either old people, or young fogies who are old at heart.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
Yes so older people still send cards and will use RM to send them. I tend to send online Christmas cards now and put holiday pictures on Facebook too but my parents still send Christmas and birthday cards and postcards by post. I also send birthday cards by post still and if the friend or relative having the birthday is not nearby and it is not a big birthday we won't see them in person for it
Has anyone worked out how to hang on-line Christmas cards on strings around the room, or display them on mantelpieces, cupboard tops and so on? Most of them seem to have some sort of animation. Sending holiday pictures on Facebook isn't a good idea, unless you have a very restricted page, because it demonstrates to all and sundry that your house is empty, and the evilly inclined can have easy access.
Create a slideshow from them and send it to your flat screen TV
WRT the one in one out deal with France, which I suspect won't work, I suggest the plan which might work is this: For one week (or even less) starting on date X - the date being the day after it is announced, 100% of all boat arrivals will be returned immediately to France.
The probability is that people will then stop arriving, and wait for the week to be out. If that happens, then the short period, 24 hours before it ends, is extended a further few days, and so on without limit, just a few days at a time.
If they do keep arriving, then again, extending a few days at a time would fairly soon see a big drop in the numbers.
Comments
I wasn't being politically partisan. However being as you couldn't resist, the traffic is not all one way. Your future Tory leader could be Aphra Brandreth the daughter of Gyles.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04809/
As for peace for Ukraine, we all knew the 24 hours was bombast however, again, Trump hasn’t achieved peace in 6 months, Biden, The EU and UK haven’t managed it in years so again he might also fail but he could also succeed, early days.
I’m far from a Trump or MAGA lover but it’s very easy to point at “failures” so far but it’s early and the original point that if it succeeds it asks very difficult questions is a very valid one.
It is very hard to get a job in France without suitable papers. A blind eye is turned towards employing French citizens irregularly. Employing illegals like that gets hit with a heavy hand - the unions (among others) are very keen to get such employers reported and shutdown.
Emails are free and instantaneous.
I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.
I don’t think newsreaders following their parents footsteps is remotely an issue. More of a problem when BBC presenters write books which are then pushed on every BBC programme for example.
And part of the problem there is that there aren't clear metrics for a lot of the things that matter (people's happiness, say), or whether Trump's policies were responsible for the changes (suppose Ukraine wins the war despite Trump cosying up to Putin).
Also, in some respects, the time it takes for them to travel is an advantage. Knowing that it took at least a couple of days to arrive, and would take at least a couple more for letter in the opposite direction, reduces the implicit pressure to reply immediately that exists with an email.
FWIW my eldest is thinking about becoming a doctor like his grandfather, my youngest is thinking about something physics/maths/F1 related, like me he loves physics, numbers, and F1.
I’ve told them if they are lazy, only the University of Oxford will accept them and they’ll spend the rest of their lives flipping burgers at McDonalds.
100% of all boat arrivals will be returned immediately to France.
The probability is that people will then stop arriving, and wait for the week to be out. If that happens, then the short period, 24 hours before it ends, is extended a further few days, and so on without limit, just a few days at a time.
If they do keep arriving, then again, extending a few days at a time would fairly soon see a big drop in the numbers.
The fact that email goes into an inbox with a plethora of other emails means it is there to be viewed as and when convenient, not immediately.
Urgent communications should be via phone.
It’s very easy to cry “nepotism” but usually it’s a lot less sinister than nepotism implies.
https://x.com/SteveBakerFRSA/status/1942967633025876398
It didn't work, though. Rome's main problem was endemic civil war. Augustus and Tiberius were to blame, but even after 15 centuries the succession process had never been formalised.
Eg, the Economist prints over 400K weekly; a good proportion of these (don't know how many) will be mailed. Multiply this by a big number, and millions of weeklies awe going in the post.
Lots of people (younger as well as older??) won't and don't read long or demanding stuff or fun stuff on a screen. I am one of them.
The worst possible choices.
Agreed completely on Reeves. Raising National Insurance was the worst possible choice a Chancellor could make and she hammered employers with multiple rises at the same time.
On that note I thank everyone for my time here, and I fully deserve the ban hammer that TSE is about to rain down on me.......
Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city
The start of any recovery process is to accept that you are in a mess and need help. Kemi and the remaining Tories can't stomach the idea that they did anything wrong, and the endless "Labour have broken this" guff is met with deaf ears for obvious reasons.
I was going to ask if there has ever been a leader as tone deaf, arrogant and politically stunted as Kemi Badenoch. Then I remembered Liz Truss.
My lad is doing OK, but all the cards are stacked against him.
My wife and I don't send or expect cards, with the exception of family living overseas. The only people we get cards for are people whom we're close enough to see in person to celebrate their birthday/Christmas and we'll give the cards in person then.
If you're not close enough to see them in person, why send a card?
Don't send postcards to anyone. My wife will upload pictures to Facebook which family and friends can keep in touch with. I mostly just don't bother.
Fred Dimbleby edited Cherwell, the Oxford University student newspaper
A9 dualling is an interesting example - it's taking a lot longer to deliver than suggested, and there have been some delays on the actual construction of the segments, but they tend to be minor and recognised very early in the process - like Tomatin/Moy extending from end '27 to start '28.
Maybe Miliband to a lesser extent - I always had time for him, but he's been a much more effective and sincere communicator since not being leader.
For the fortunate the double advantage is obvious: OTOH genetics, and OTOH network/leg up/work ethic/bank of mum and dad/start off based in agreeable bit of London/education/who you meet/circles you move in.
This is ineradicable. I have lived for the last 35 years in a wonderful but rather neglected part of the north. The state education system (all my children went through it) is pretty decent but not in the same league in aspiration, confidence and contacts as to begin equalising.
I'm not sure what they think "paperless billing" means.
I turned mine off years ago. I'd rather make my own mistakes.
Both physically, and for parcels sent by Evri.
When we order from Amazon etc often they will ring the bell, wait 5 or 10 seconds at most then dump the delivery and sod off.
Royal Mail posties however if you are not in will leave a note and leave the package at the backdoor where it is less likely to be stolen.
There are exceptions but I still prefer the heirs of Postman Pat to the timed to the second employees of postman Bezos
We tend to express happy birthday, anniversary etc on our Whats app or facebook pages
Most everything we do today is by e mail and bcs payments
Indeed my daughters house sale and purchase, plus survey is done entirely by e mail
We receive virtually no post and to be honest, for a couple of oldies, we are quite proud how we have embraced modern tech communications
Many decades ago, my dad got a pre-Christmas call from the owner of a haulage company he used. "You haven't paid the money you owed," the man said, "and I need to pay the men their Christmas bonusses!"
My dad said he had sent a cheque; he phoned the bank, cancelled the old cheque, and drove up to the haulage company to drop off a new cheque. Then he thought nothing more of it.
Many months later he got another phone call from the owner of the haulage company. Laughing, he said that they had been widening the entrance to their depot and found another postbox in the wall. In it were a load of letters from when a relief postman had been on duty, and who had put letters in the wrong box. One of the letters included my dad's cheque.
I once sent an Ebay parcel to Austria, which enjoyed a nice little holiday in Australia on the way (it disappeared for a couple of weeks after tracking showed it arriving in Australia, but did eventually get delivered to the correct location in Austria).
I'd even printed out the label, so it wasn't my (terrible) handwriting!
As far back as the 70's it was talked about, and for anyone who knows the road from Perth to Inverness it is shockingly dangerous
Mind you, why should the Highlands receive road improvement benefits when the important voters are in the central belt ?
Sending holiday pictures on Facebook isn't a good idea, unless you have a very restricted page, because it demonstrates to all and sundry that your house is empty, and the evilly inclined can have easy access.
Gave up trying to change it
'The truth is that Jake never truly recovered from the downfall of Liz Truss - a prime minister whose brief and chaotic tenure he enthusiastically supported.'
Unsurprisingly, Jake Berry's local Conservative association not hugely impressed by his defection to Reform.
https://x.com/DavidTWilcock/status/1943244250738487559
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5TJK-v9rBQ
BBC Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg detects a cooling towards Trump and sabre-rattling at Europe. (3m45s video)
(I've been reading Terry Pratchett again!)
Many parcel companies offer an online service to book and collect from your home